I bet it’s not 25 miles from Lenoir City to Sweetwater, and not much more than that from Midway to Greenback, but that little chunk of land is pretty much the extent of my travels when we went running around on Saturday night. Occasionally we might go to Knoxville, and I can remember going to Friendsville or Ten Mile or Vonore or Madisonville, but those were about the only deviations. Rarely did we go further south. I bet I haven’t been to Chattanooga 3 times in my life (not counting driving through)
That’s not a huge area I know, but at the time it was enough. Maybe it was limited, but I don’t remember ever being really bored. If there wasn’t something to do in one place, we went to another. Sometimes it might be as simple as stopping by the IGA in Philadelphia for a coke and bag of peanuts, or maybe watching what was showing at Cole’s for the umpteenth time, or driving up to the back door of the bar just across the Monroe County line for a couple of quarts of beer. (I can’t remember the name of the place, that group of brain cells has long since died) And on those times you could actually get a real date there was even more to do.
Anyway, if each of us threw in 50 cents for gas we could drive around all night, so the sky was the limit, or at least the county line was. :)
2 comments:
It didn't take much for us to have a good time. Just being together and away from the house was good. We would just come to town and sit at the A&W watching other people circle around and around. Me and Trish didn't have much money for gas but we went from Loudon to L.C. and on down to Sweetwater many times. It depended on who else was running around as to how long we stayed in one spot. I remember our parents only giving us a dollar to go to the show. We would sneek a couple of people in so we would have enough to get a coke. That was the very best of years !!!
I went to New York City in 1999 and it didn't feel like it was nearly as far away as the night I went with Charlie Barnett to the "Capri Cinema" in the middle of Knoxville - it felt like we had left the state! Me & my dates didn't usually get any farther than Cole's & the A&W either.
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